Free Exile by Denise Mina Page A

dripping down her neck and soaking into her shirt collar. She’d reached the bottom of the steep hill to her house before she remembered Jimmy. She turned round and walked back down the road, stopping at a cash machine on the way. She withdrew two hundred and fifty quid, walked to the scheme in Finneston and took the pissy lift up to the second floor. She tiptoed along the landing and slid the money through Jimmy’s letter box, bolting for the stairs in case he came out and saw her. She knew from her own experience that nothing belittles more viciously than pity and Jimmy was small enough already.
    It was only when she got down to the street that she admitted the truth: going back to give the money to Jimmy was just a pretext. She wanted to go past the pub again, to see if Leslie was there. She stopped and looked along the street to the Grove, too embarrassed to go back in. But Leslie wasn’t there. And Leslie wasn’t coming back.

Chapter 10
    BAD DAY
    Michael had a fever. He was scratching through the window into her bedroom, his knife-edged nails gouging through the glass. She was sweating and exhausted, and knew she couldn’t take the noise anymore. She leaned across to open the window and a river of blood flooded into her house. The anxious, heavy knocking woke her up. Her first thought was Leslie, Leslie had come back, but it wasn’t her knock and she didn’t do morning visits. She sat up and looked at her watch. It was nine thirty and the Ruchill fever tower lurked behind the bedroom curtain.
    It was cold out in the hall. A lone blue envelope ached on the mat and the answering machine flashed a red message. She pulled on her overcoat over her T-shirt and knickers, kicking the letter under the telephone table for later, and looked out of the spy hole. Detective Inspector Hugh McAskill brushed the rain from his red hair and looked back at her, his long melancholy face distorted wide by the convex glass, his blue eyes watery and tired, his cheeks flushed from the cold. Behind him stood mustachioed DI Inness, dressed for the weather in a scarf and gloves and sturdy anorak. It was a bad day for this; she felt stupid and friendless and sick. She could pretend to be out and hope they’d go away.
    “We know you’re in there.” McAskill spoke gently. “We can hear you moving about.”
    Maureen paused with her hand on the latch, took a deep breath and opened the door.
    “Hugh.”
    McAskill nodded sadly. “Can we come in for a minute, Maureen?”
    She opened the door and the policemen brushed their feet on the mat before stepping into the hall. She had left the heating on overnight, hoping to evaporate some of Douglas’s money, and it was warm in the flat. They took off their scarves and gloves. “Why has he sent ye this time?” she said.
    Hugh raised his eyebrows and pressed his lips together. Chief Inspector Joe McEwan was determined to get her for the assault on Angus in Millport. He had no evidence, he couldn’t place her or Leslie on the Isle of Cumbrae at the time, and Angus himself was acting mental and wouldn’t tell them anything. But Joe had made it a special point of principle to question her about any detail that came up, just to remind her that he was still in the game.
    ” ‘Nother line of questioning’s come up,” said Hugh, “so here we are.”
    “How are you today, Miss O’Donnell?” said Inness unpleasantly. He was an officious prick with a Freddie Mercury mustache and the social skills of a horny lapdog.
    “Look,” said Maureen, praying she wouldn’t cry and watching her feet as she did up the buttons on her overcoat, “just tell me why you’re here. I’ll get scared and then ye can leave.”
    “We have been given information,” began Inness, warming to his petty office, slapping his gloves through his palm like a TV Nazi, “that you have been receiving letters from a certain hospital patient. We’ve come to pick them up.”
    Maureen folded her arms. She could give him the